Evasions Without End

Written:Written at the end of February-beginning of March 1905Published:First published in 1930 InLenin Miscellany XV.

      Published according to the manuscript.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Foreign Languages Publishing House,1962,

      Moscow,Volume 8,

      pages223-224.Translated:Bernard Isaacs and The Late Isidor LaskerTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2003).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Iskraand the so-called Council are continuing their tactics of delay,
of pretexts, and of evasion in the matter of convening the Congress. Plekhanov
tries to take a formal stand by reiterating with an insistence worthy of a
better cause that the Congress is convened by the Council and that therefore any
congress not so convened is illegal. This argument is so one-sided and naively
self-interested that one is strongly tempted “to give the hare a bit of
the

			     bear’s ear”[1]—to

give Plekhanov a medal for his meticulous observance
of the Party Rules and Party laws! We would most humbly ask the very honourable
advocate of the dialectic, that is, of the all-round approach: does the Council
exist for the Party or the Party for the Council? Is the Council accountable
to, and controllable by, the Party or is the Party accountable to the Council?
Does discipline for the higher body eliminate discipline for the lower body?
Will our vigilant limb of the law try to remember the arguments he used in this
connection at the Second Congress of the Party?

TheCouncil, according to our Rules, is duty bound to convene a congress when
half the votes are cast for it. What is the Party to do when the Council shirks
its duties? The Rules of the German Social-Democratic Party give a direct answer
to this question, namely, the Congress in such an event is convened not by the
supreme governing body of the Party, but by a special control committee
independent of that body. Our Rules give no answer at all to that questionDoes this mean, we ask our friends of the newIskra, that the problem
    is insoluble? Does it mean that should the Council shirk its Party
    responsibilities the Party would have to dissolve and be superseded by the
    Council? The Party for the Council—is that it?

Wemake bold to say that this is not so, that the Party itself isobligedto see to it that its Rules are observed by its functionaries,
that “to see to it” does not only mean to criticise by word but to
rectify by deed. He who is unable to demandsuccessfullyof his
agents the discharge of their duties towards those who entrusted them is
unworthy of the name of a politically free citizen. He who cannot demandsuccessfullyof his agents the discharge of their Party duties towards
those who entrusted them is unworthy of the name of Party member. The Council is
the agent of the committees. The committeesare in duty boundto demand
of this agent the discharge of its duties towards those who have entrusted
it. This the committees can doonlyby electing their bureau for
convening the Congress. And that is what the committees have done. That is what
they wereobligedto do, if they were conscious of their elementary
Party obligations.

Willthe honourable Comrade Plekhanov, perhaps, try to deny the correctness of
this statement? Will he try to nameanySocial-Democratic party in the
world whose members would have refrained from acting as our committees acted,
when faced with the refusal of a given Party body to convene the Party Congress?
We challenge you to try, Comrade Plekhanov.

Nowlet us proceed to the second factual question, whether our Council actually
did shirk its Party duties in the matter of convening the Congress. This is no
mere formal question, since apart from duty under the Rules there is still the

			       duty...[2]

[1]The allusion is to I. A. Krylov’s fable “The Hare at the Hunt”Ed.—Lenin

[2]The manuscript breaks off here.—Ed.